


Foss in therapy, part 2

by belmanoir



Series: Foss in therapy [2]
Category: Kyle XY
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir





	Foss in therapy, part 2

Nicole opens the door for him with a warm smile. "Come in." He wants nothing more than to walk back to his truck and drive away, but he grimaces a smile at her and steps inside.

This time there's a glass of water waiting next to the Kleenex box.

"How has your week been?"

"Let's just skip to the"--he almost says _interrogation_ \--"questions."

She smiles again. She smiles too much. It makes him uneasy. "That _was_ a question. You don't have to answer it if you don't want to."

He ducks his head, embarrassed. "It was fine." He realizes belatedly that he left something out. "Yours?"

Her smile widens. "It was good, thank you. I picked up a few new patients, and Lori's friend Hillary taught me how to make soufflé for her video blog." He tries to look blank, but she laughs. "I don't usually aspire to French cuisine, but I like to cook." He knows that. Sitting in his apartment with a carton of takeout, he watched her and Stephen prepare dozens of meals. "Do you have any hobbies?" she asks.

He laughs. "Worrying." He wishes immediately that he hadn't said it. He looks away. "That's what Baylin always used to say." 

"It sounds as if you had reason to be worried about Mr. Baylin."

Tom shrugs. "He thought nothing could get to him in that house."

"You set up the security there, didn't you?"

"Security systems only work if you use them."

"What type of system did you create?"

"It's complicated. Just one system can't be secure." He doesn't mention how easy the Tragers' own system was to hijack. "There were layers to it."

"What kinds of layers?"

The house is Latnok's now. There's no need to keep the information confidential, and she won't understand most of it anyway. "Well, for starters, I had two sets of motion sensors powered by two separate generators, so if someone tried to cut the power..." Fifteen minutes later, he realizes he's drawing her a diagram of the most likely points of entry into Baylin's property and throws down the pen in disgust. "Come on, you don't care about this."

"It's interesting," she says, and sounds like she means it. Of course, she always sounds like she means it. "I understand more of it than I do when Stephen tells me about motherboards and Perl scripts."

He crumples up the drawing and drops it in the little trash can she left by his chair for used Kleenex.

"Where did you learn to set up systems like this?"

"I was in the service."

"I should have guessed. What did you do?"

"I was in a recon-extraction unit."

"I'm sorry, I don't know a lot about the military. What does that mean?"

He watches her face. "Torture and rescue."

"I see," she says slowly. "Which were you trained in?"

Sometimes even he has trouble believing she and Kyle aren't related. "That's confidential." He's looking forward, a little, to watching her squirm about that one.

"Rescue."

He frowns, startled. "How did you know that?"

She smiles. "Just a guess."

"Kyle guessed torture." The kid wasn't wrong, exactly. You didn't serve in Tom's unit without picking up certain skills. But it wasn't his primary role.

She looks taken aback for a second, and then she laughs. "He wasn't happy with training that day?"

Tom shakes his head.

"Once when he was ten I grounded Josh _and_ made him do the dishes for a week. He called me Frau Kommandant the whole time." The way she looks at him makes him uncomfortable. Most people don't really look at other people. They're too much in their own heads. He's relied on that for his entire professional life. Nicole really looks. "It was funny, but it hurt my feelings too. Silly, isn't it?"

He shrugs.

"Do you know how many people you rescued?"

"Not enough."

"Which part of the security system did Mr. Baylin not use that led to him being shot?"

"It was Kyle. He wanted to stay in touch with your family, so I set up a webcam for him. But he couldn't use it more than two minutes, or Zzyzx could trace the signal. Baylin fell and Kyle forgot about the timer."

She frowns. "That's funny. I got the impression from what you said earlier that it was Mr. Baylin who made a mistake."

"He didn't tell me!" Even now, Tom can feel his temperature rising just thinking about it. "Kyle wanted to tell me and Baylin told him not to. He knew I would have made us change location and he didn't want to leave that damn house. It wasn't Kyle's fault. He didn't fully understand the risks. Baylin did. Should have, anyway."

"Why did Zzyzx want to kill Mr. Baylin anyway?"

"I don't think they did. Not then. Luckily the sniper they hired was incompetent."

Her eyes widen. "You mean he was aiming at Kyle?"

"Someone had tried to shoot Kyle a few days before he left here with his fake parents. He missed. When Baylin was shot, the two of them were standing right next to each other."

She swallows. Even after being Kyle's mother for a couple of years, the reality of violence is still shocking to her. He's got to be careful in these sessions, or she could stop Kyle and Jessi's training anyway. "How do you feel about that?" she asks.

Sometimes Tom doesn't feel like he's damming his emotions, to use Nicole's metaphor. He feels like that kid who stuck his finger in the dike. But he holds on, counts to ten. His voice comes out rough but even. "Baylin would never have forgiven himself."

"What about you?"

Tom hasn't forgiven himself anyway. That isn't the point. "Baylin is Kyle's father. Kids are supposed to outlive their parents. Getting Kyle killed would have broken him." That, he's sure of. Baylin was so sensitive he'd learned to close himself up, like a flower at night. He couldn't have withstood a blow like that.

She's seeing him again, and he suddenly realizes he's said way too much. His heart pounds. "It's been an hour," she says calmly. "Same time next week?"


End file.
